Walking The Edge: A Romantic Suspense/Espionage Thriller (Corpus Brides Trilogy Book 1) (24 page)

People like them, who chose duty as a way of life. He’d made the decision twenty years earlier with a clear mind and had never thought he’d live to regret making it.

His gaze on a point in the distance, he allowed himself to recall the day his life had irredeemably changed to take the path he stood on today. He’d been nineteen, and the baccalaureate results had come out that morning. Surprisingly, he’d passed with stellar grades. All thanks to Katy’s iron-grip nurturing. He went to see her first with the result slip in his hand.

She’d hugged him, asking the Lord to bless him in effusive words of lyrical Arabic. What she’d said afterward had made him laugh.

“You can do good now, son.”

Good to her meant the law, even if the police were held in contempt in their part of the world. Yes, he could definitely score a place in the best law-enforcement school in France, but who chose such a life willingly? For most of his existence, he’d lived from day to day—he had no idea what to do, seeing as he’d always thought he’d flunk school and pull something together in the neighbourhood.

That day, he didn’t know why, but he’d also gone down to his parents’ flat. To his intense surprise, he’d found his mother there. She hadn’t been alone. A man had been her; Gerard knew him to be one of the biggest drug barons of the whole city.
So that’s who she’s frolicking with
, he couldn’t help but think.

She had welcomed him with a hug and said she had a gift for him.

“Son,” the dealer had said. “It’s time to welcome you into the family.” He’d then exchanged a glance with Gerard’s mother. “School done bollocks for you, my boy. It’s high time you joined the real life. Again, welcome to the family.”

The ‘business,’ as he’d understood it.

“No,” he’d replied simply.

His mother had stood and slapped him, hard. “What more do you want,
espèce de petit con
?”

True; what more could a boy like him ask for, aspire to, really? All he’d known was that he didn’t want this life.

Katy’s words had come back to haunt him—the law. Who chose that one, he wondered?

People who have no other choice
, had been the answer whispering into his mind.

People like him.

He’d left for Paris as soon as he’d walked out of that flat. After obtaining a
License de Droit
—a degree being a prerequisite to postulate for entrance at
l’École nationale supérieure des officiers de police
—from a prestigious university in Paris, he had taken the
concours
to enter the police. Never once had he looked back.

He’d met Rashid there, at the academy in Cannes-Écluse, an area close to Paris. Then, as children of Marseille, they’d both asked to be assigned there when they finished their confirmation.

Duty became their life, because the other alternative proved too dire even to contemplate. As such, for men like them on such desperate paths, there existed no life beyond duty.

He had to consider himself lucky, though. He had Katy, his sisters, and Samir who was like a son to him.

What more did he want? What more could he need?

The truth remained, he shouldn’t want anything else, and so he shouldn’t crave what he could have had with Fey. The time they had had together amounted to nothing but a window to a possible heaven that had opened slightly to give them a glimpse at something different.

Yet, what could be paradise when you had resigned yourself to check your life in at the gates of Hell?

Finally turning away from the empty street, he looked up at Rashid. “Life goes on,” he said. “Let’s get on with it.”

***

Marseille.
Porte d’Aix

Wednesday, December 19. 7:12 p.m.

In the car, she kept looking out of the window, even after they left the area where Gerard lived. Beside her, Scott worked on a laptop, probably pulling out whatever information he could from Max’s phone. Beeps and other such sounds alerted her of packets of data being exchanged between devices. It had to be important intel; why else would Scott be sounding out the memory cards of the phone so thoroughly and passing the information on right away to whomever he was in wireless contact with?

But right now, to her, nothing mattered but the fact that she had left behind the one man who’d made a difference in her life.

Gerard had made her whole—he had loved her for the woman she was inside, a woman even she didn’t really know but whom he had gotten rather well acquainted with. How had he done this, delved to the depths of her heart and soul, when she herself didn’t know how deep those pits went?

Damn, bloody misery engulfing again
, she wanted to curse, but what would be the point? She had made her choice, hadn’t she? Her son over her lover.

It’s how it should be
, everything inside her screamed, so why then did it feel so wrong, so disturbing?

So much like dying?

They had left Marseille, she realized, on the road to Aix. The world inside the car existed in a sort of bubble proofed to the sounds and happenings and real life outside. Before her eyes, the scenery grew whiter as they went along, probably leading to a winter ski station around the border of Switzerland. Snow covered every surface with a thick blanket, as heavy as the silence shrouding them in the car.

A soft, deadened lull worked itself over her, until she suddenly thought she heard Scott say “I’m sorry” at the same time a tiny prick touched her neck.

Then blackness swooped in on her in the blink of an eye, and she fell, plunging into its abyss.

*

Scott watched her eyes close, and he reached for her sagging body. Gently, he laid her on the back seat.

Bloody hell, he hated having to do this to her. But he had orders to follow, and follow them, he would. What would happen to her, though? She remained, after all, the woman who had borne him his only child. As such, she held an undeniable place in his heart.

He grabbed his mobile and placed a call, then cut the line after a few rings. The phone soon rang in his palm, and he picked up.

“Good job, Scott,” the man calling said.

He sat up straighter. “Sir.” The big man himself.
Bloody hell
.

“You’re on your way to the facility?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good. And Fey?”

“She’s with me, sir.” He paused, not knowing quite how to phrase the question at the forefront of his mind. “What will happen to her?”

“Right now, nothing. We have bigger fish to fry. For once, it helped that Max was really an idiot, no disrespect to you, Scott. We found out his contact, thanks to your prompt manoeuvring with the data his phone contained.”

“May I know who?”

“Sarah.”

Shit
. Their Egyptian operative and Middle East expert. A terribly alluring and sexy woman who’d probably reeled Max in by getting him into her bed. His brother had never resisted cheap flesh.

“They were covering Stepanovic, too,” the man said. “We have a lead on him right now.”

He couldn’t remain in the dark, though. Whatever at stake here could affect Seth, and he took no chances where his son was concerned.

“Sir, what do we do about Fey? The police
commissaire
and his friend in Marseille also know way too much about us.”

The other man laughed softly. “All in good time, Scott. All in good time.” A pause came. “Leave Fey to me. I’ll handle her personally.”

The call disconnected, and he remained there with his gaze on her. This would be bad. Very bad. The head of the
Corpus
did not get his hands dirty for trifling issues. What did he have in store for her?

Scott didn’t want any harm to come to her, but rules were there to be respected and orders had to be obeyed. She had seriously crossed the line on both.

He’d wait until further directives came right from the top.

In the meantime, he’d do his best to make sure none of the shit ever touched Seth’s life.

Chapter Thirteen

Marseille. Undisclosed area

Saturday, December 22. 7:46 a.m.

Her head throbbed with a deadly tattoo when she awoke. Damn it, she had to have the hangover of the century.

But where was she?

With a start, she sat up, not recognizing the dingy room. And what the hell was she wearing? Jeans and a bulky, wool sweater she didn’t recognize owning.
What’s going on?

Trying hard to remember what had happened to her, her mind drew up and slammed against a blank wall, her last recollection being of sitting with Scott in the car.

Something vibrated against her thigh, jerking her out of her reflections. She reached into her trouser pocket and retrieved a small, buzzing mobile. An alert flashed on the lit screen.

Nouveau message
, it read.

She pressed the button for ‘ok’ and a text appeared.

La Canebière, Vieux Port. 9 a.m.

She stood, went to the window, and pulled the drape slightly open. She must still be in Marseille. Only in this town did the ochre light of the Mediterranean sun fall on the sable-coloured buildings with such a rich hue, winter or summer. Pockets of melting snow dotted the pavement—still winter.

She took another glance at the mobile. Her brow furrowed when she opened the calendar. Only three days had passed since she’d been in that barn with Max? The digital clock display confirmed the time as close to eight.

The message had mentioned nine. She had no idea where she could be in Marseille. How would she get to
La Canebière
? A taxi, maybe? Did she have money? Rummaging in the pockets of the jean, she came up with a few Euro bills.

Questions—always more questions. Never any answers.

And what the hell had happened to her in those past three days? She had a feeling she’d been completely out of it.

Without pausing to think any further, since thinking simply intensified the pain inside her skull, she dashed to the door. At least, her body functioned properly, not sluggish or failing to respond to her brain’s commands.

The door opened easily when she twisted the handle. She emerged into a drab hallway and ran down the rickety stairs covered in linoleum tiles all the way to the ground floor and out of the building.

She hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take her to her destination.
Don’t think
, she repeated to herself during the trip through sections of the city she didn’t recall ever seeing during her time with Gerard.

The area surrounding the port buzzed in the early morning, activity in full swing at
Quai des Belges
on the east end of the
Vieux Port
, the fish market thriving. The tang of seawater and seafood hit her nostrils when she emerged from the car, and she wrinkled her nose at the sensory assault. Glancing once again at the phone’s screen, she confirmed the time as five minutes to nine. She ambled over to a bench and sat down, wondering what would happen now she’d gotten there.

The screech of seagulls hurt her ears and competed with the din of fishermen and other vendors in the nearby open marketplace. People milled around her, going about their tasks.

At one point, an old gentleman with a limping gait came to sit at the other end of the bench. She gave him a cursory glance. He wore a coat with the lapels and collar up to protect his neck. A hat threw shadows over the upper half of his face, and he held his chin and mouth lowered into his thick woollen scarf.

“
Belle journée, n’est-ce pas?
” he said.

She gave him a small smile, humouring him just that much.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to meet you, my dear. I have been, how shall we say, busy.”

He’d reverted to English, and she frowned. What the hell? Could he be confusing her with someone else?

She shrugged and scooted to the edge of the bench to stand up and walk away, but his next words made her freeze.

“You’re not thinking of running, are you, Morgane?”

Her first thought screamed he must’ve mistaken her for someone else.

But then another realization exploded inside her mind. As if a crystal orb just out of her reach had suddenly been dropped and crashed into a thousand shards at her feet.

He had called her Morgane...

He chuckled. “Caught your attention, didn’t it? Ah, yes. I thought it would.”

“Who are you?” she asked. “And how do you know my name?”

A soft laugh escaped him. “I know all there is to know about you, my dear.”

“Like what?” she shot back.

He remained silent for some long seconds, his gaze lost in the distance, before he finally spoke again. “You were born Morgane Marie Catherine Van Heerden thirty-four years ago on a farm in Zimbabwe, the only child of farmer Conrad Van Heerden and his wife, Olga Botha. They were killed when you turned seventeen, in a civil riot led by an armed militia in your country. You fled across the border to South Africa, where you enrolled at university in Pretoria and got involved in political activism. But all along, your desire for revenge was driven more by ideology than personal feelings, and it’s how we knew we could bring you into our fold.”

Lord, he had it all down to the last detail. She remembered...

“How—?” she started, then stopped. She knew his identity.

The head of the
Corpus
.

“I see the wheels clicking inside your pretty little head.”

His voice carried a hint of laughter, and the slightly patronizing tone had her hackles rising.

“You read minds, too?” she asked coolly.

He laughed outright at her question. “Scott was right. You’re one little hellion, aren’t you?”

Scott? Him again, the traitor who’d made her believe he would take her to her son and who had knocked her out with an injection once in the car? If they thought they’d get her again... “What is it you want?”

He sobered and drew his spine up, becoming all business. “I want Fey back.”

Fey. Morgane le Fey. Now she knew where her operative moniker came from.

“Over my dead body.” Her conviction thrummed loud, clear, and hard inside the words.

“It would be our loss, my dear Morgane.”

Maybe, but it won’t be mine.
She’d lost everything to their goddamned agency.

He sighed, his gaze on the horizon. “The
Corpus
is no longer what it was. I assume you figured this out yourself. We managed to nip the mutinous hatch in the egg—hence why I couldn’t meet you while you were at our facility on the Swiss border—but there’s still a lot to be done to return to our former glory.”

She remained silent, refusing to please him with a question or a statement. So that’s where she had been in the past few days. She’d bet she’d been knocked out cold. Damn it, did these men have a thing for passed-out women or what?

“You gave us some grief, you know that, young lady? In my day, such behaviour would never have gone unpunished.”

He probably meant to say she should be dead. Then why did she still breathe?

He paused for a long moment and sighed. “But these are troubled times, my dear. We need all the people we can trust, Fey, and despite your rather rebellious manner, you would still be an asset on our side. There’s a lot you could teach our new recruits.”

At this, she couldn’t choke back a startled gasp. “You want me as a case officer?”

“Yes. I believe I just offered you the job. Think about it, Morgane. I assure you the alternative would not be very palatable.”

The job or death. Why didn’t it surprise her? Their way or the highway. But to offer her to head her own cell... “Are you insane?”

He chuckled. “I would surely hope not.” He rubbed his gloved hands together, as if to ward off the cold. “You wouldn’t know, but our operational headquarters are in Marseille.”

“So?”

“Don’t insult your fine mind, Morgane. Think.”

Gerard.
His face materialized before her eyes, and she grew silent. Had the big boss just told her she could have a normal life along with being part of the
Corpus
? A case officer could have ties, because he or she no longer worked in the field...

“Marseille.” The older man continued speaking. “
La phocéene
. You know, it is said Caesar and Cleopatra held a good number of their secret trysts here in Massilia.” He stood. “Think about it, my dear. I bid you a good day.”

Then in a flash, the throng of walkers engulfed him, and she lost sight of his presence. She blinked, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

She’d learned her real identity, and the head of the
Corpus
himself had offered her work in the decisive rungs of the organization. She tried hard to think of a feature she could use to describe the man, but she came up against a wall. His disguise had been perfect. She couldn’t clearly state if he was very old, middle-aged, or what he looked like. Now she thought of it, had it been padding on his frame to make him seem that size, or was he really so stocky?

Her head hurt, and she brought a hand up to her temple. What on earth had that been about Massilia and secret trysts?

Don’t insult your fine mind.

She gasped and jumped up.

For God’s sake, the man had told her where to go. The building housing the
Mémoires de la phocéene
.

Fishing for money in her pocket, she found a few more bills. She hailed another taxi and asked the driver to take her to the museum.

After stepping out of the car in front of the looming Roman edifice, she hurried into the cavernous lobby and stopped at the desk.

“Is there a section about Caesar and Cleopatra?”

The woman smiled at her. “Of course. It’s at the back, and it opens onto the walled garden.”

Armed with a plan, her heart hammering in a thunderous beat that could probably be lethal, she walked to the room in question.

Golden sunlight bathed the interior, streaming in from the arches opening onto a magnificent walled garden. The room lay empty except for a man who stood near a painting at the far end. Her feet remained glued to the threshold when she reckoned the tall man with the long, silky, dark hair wasn’t alone. He had a blond youth with him, the boy eagerly chatting in French about something to do with the canvas.

Scott’s head came up and he saw her. A smile spread across his face. He placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and nodded towards the door.

Seth.

She would swear her heart actually stopped beating when she encountered his deep blue gaze. What a handsome young man. Her mouth opened, but no word nor any sound escaped her. Tears welled in her eyes, and she couldn’t prevent them from falling down her cheeks.

With hesitant steps, she went into the room. Seth left his father and walked towards her. He stopped about a foot from her.

Hesitation lay etched on his still-boyish features. She brought a hand up to touch him, but she lost her nerve and let it fall back again.

“You know who I am?” she finally asked, her voice a mere whisper.

He nodded, and she couldn’t help but note the certainty in the movement.

“My mother.”

She smiled through the tears and opened her arms to him.

***

Marseille.
Vieux Port

Friday, January 18. 3:30 p.m.

The
commissariat
bristled with activity. They’d had a break in a local drug ring, with everyone still high from the elation of the bust.

Gerard stood at the window of his office, his gaze lost in the view of the
Vieux Port
. He was happy they had nailed the dealers and closed another case, but the feeling of collective jubilation and euphoria had no grip over him, slithering into nothingness the minute he shifted his focus back onto his dismal life.

He had lost the one woman he’d ever loved, not just once but twice, and worst of all, he had no idea what happened to her. Had she found her son? Was she even still alive?

Four weeks since she’d left with Scott, and Gerard hadn’t heard anything about the
Corpus
. Not that he’d expected to, but still. There had been no mention of a dead man’s body found in a barn near Aix. He had, however, been notified that Interpol had closed in on Stepanovic somewhere around Bosnia, the arms dealer now under arrest and awaiting trial.

Gerard sighed. The news hadn’t thrilled him. Nothing seemed worth it anymore, but as long as life still thrummed inside his body, he would have to keep going on.

The sounds of revelry from the main office grated on his nerves, and he went to the door and closed it. He wanted nothing but some silence and solitude. However much he found those at home, it never seemed to be enough...